A California man has pleaded guilty to inadvertently selling bank accounts to Russians who were indicted Friday by a federal grand jury for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Richard Pinedo pleaded guilty to using stolen identities to set up bank accounts that were then used by the Russians, according to a February 12 court filing. The special counsel investigating Russian meddling on Friday announced charges against 13 Russian citizens and three Russian entities for interfering in the election. The indictment alleges that the Internet Research Agency, a St. Petersburg-based social media company with Kremlin ties, 12 of its employees, and its financial backer orchestrated an effort to influence the 2016 election campaign in favor of President Donald Trump. Prosecutors charged Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a businessman with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, with funding the operation through companies he controls, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, Concord Catering and a number of subsidiaries. Prigozhin and his businesses allegedly provided “significant funds” for the Internet Research Agency’s operations to disrupt the U.S. election, according to the indictment. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said that the Russian conspirators sought to promote social discord in the United State and undermine public confidence in democracy. “We must not allow them to succeed, Rosenstein said at a news conference in Washington. The conspiracy was part of a larger operation code-named Project Lakhta, Rosenstein said. “Project Lakhta included multiple components some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation and others targeting foreign audiences in multiple countries,” Rosenstein said. Mueller, who has made no public statements about the Russia investigation since his appointment last May, did not speak at the news conference. Charges against Russian nationals The indictment charges all the defendants with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Three defendants are charged with conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud, and five individuals with aggravated identity theft. None of the defendants charged in the indictment are in custody, according to a spokesman for the Special Counsels office. The U.S. and Russia dont have an extradition treaty and it’s unlikely that any of the defendants will stand trial in the U.S. The 37-page charging document alleges that the Russian conspirators sought to coordinate their effort with Trump campaign associates, but it does not accuse anyone on the Trump campaign of colluding with the Russians. Trump took to Twitter after the indictment was announced to again deny his campaign worked with the Russians. “Russia started their anti-U.S. campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for president, Trump tweeted. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!” The indictment marks the first time Muellers office has brought charges against Russians and Russian entities for meddling in the 2016 election. Muellers sprawling investigation has led to the indictments of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and associate Rick Gates.Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about their contacts with Russian officials. Details of indictment The indictment says the Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. political system started as early as 2014 and accelerated as the 2016 election campaign got underway. During the 2016 campaign, the Russian operatives posted “derogatory information” about a number of presidential candidates. But by early to mid-2016, the operation included “supporting” Trump’s presidential campaign and “disparaging” Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Taking on fake American identities, the Russian operatives communicated with “unwitting” Trump campaign associates and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities,” the indictment says. The indictment describes how Russian operatives used subterfuge, stolen identities and other methods to stage political rallies, buy ads on social media platforms, and pay gullible Americans to promote or disparage candidates. To avoid detection by U.S. law enforcement agencies, the Russian operatives used computer networks based in the United States, according to the indictment. “These groups and pages, which addressed the divisive U.S. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be controlled by U.S. activists when, in fact, they were controlled by defendants,” the indictment reads. A number of the operatives are alleged to have traveled to the United States under false pretenses to collect intelligence to inform the influence operations.

Three Russian companies and 13 Russian nationals were indicted on charges of engaging in a widespread effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, providing the most comprehensive official account to date of an effort by Moscow to upend U.S. politics and set Americans against each other.

An online army accused of sowing discord among American voters during the 2016 election emerged from a tiny corner of the Russian business empire built by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlins favorite restaurateur.

The Justice Department said Mr. Mueller’s work was not complete. The indictment does not address the hacking of Democratic email systems or whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct the F.B.I. investigation into Russian interference. Mr. Mueller is negotiating with the president’s lawyers over the terms of a possible interview.

The Russian operation began four years ago, well before Mr. Trump entered the presidential race, a fact that he quickly seized on in his defense. “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President,” he wrote on Twitter. “The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!”

Thirteen Russian nationals have been charged with illegally trying to disrupt the American political process through inflammatory social media posts and organized political rallies.

OPEN Graphic

But Mr. Trump’s statement ignored the government’s conclusion that, by 2016, the Russians were “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump” and disparaging Hillary Clinton, his opponent. Working out of the office in St. Petersburg, the Russians described waging “information warfare against the United States of America,” according to court documents.

Mr. Mueller has gathered extensive evidence of contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign: Mr. Trump’s eldest son met with a Russian lawyer in hopes of receiving political dirt on Mrs. Clinton; one adviser has admitted being tipped off in advance to Russian hacking of Democratic emails; another was in contact with a Twitter account used by Russian hackers; a federal judge found probable cause that a third adviser was an unlawful Russian agent. And the Trump campaign repeatedly and falsely denied any contacts with Russia.

Whether any of that violated federal law is the weightiest question facing Mr. Mueller, and Friday’s indictment did not answer it. But it painted a picture of a Russian operation that was multipronged, well financed and relentless.

Russian operatives traveled across the United States to gather intelligence and foment political discord. They worked with an unidentified American who advised them to focus their efforts on what they viewed as “purple” election battleground states, including Colorado, Virginia and Florida, the indictment said.

In August 2016, prosecutors said, Russians posed as Americans and coordinated with Trump campaign staff to organize rallies in Florida.

Such anecdotes are rare examples of how intelligence agencies work covertly to influence political outcomes abroad. The C.I.A. has conducted such operations for decades, but both Mr. Mueller’s indictment and an intelligence assessment last year present a startling example — unprecedented in its scope and audacity — of a foreign government working to help elect an American president.

The indictment does not explicitly say the Russian government sponsored the effort, but American intelligence officials have publicly said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed and oversaw it. The indictment notes that two of the Russian firms involved hold Russian government contracts.

“This is clearly a message document,” Robert S. Litt, the former general counsel to the director of national intelligence, said of the indictment. “Mueller wants to end the debate over whether there was Russian interference in the election.”

The Russian nationals were accused of working with the Internet Research Agency, which had a budget of millions of dollars and was designed to reach millions of Americans. The defendants were charged with carrying out a massive fraud against the American government and conspiring to obstruct enforcement of federal laws.

None of the defendants were arrested — Russia does not generally extradite its citizens to the United States. But prosecutors use such indictments to name and shame operatives, making it harder for them to work undetected in the future. If they travel abroad, they risk capture and extradition.

Russian computer specialists, divided into day teams and night teams, created hundreds of social media accounts that eventually attracted hundreds of thousands of online followers. They posed as Christian activists, anti-immigration groups and supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. One account posed as the Tennessee Republican Party and generated hundreds of thousands of followers, prosecutors said.

Separate divisions of the Internet Research Agency were in charge of graphics, data analysis and information technology, according to the indictment.

“I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people,” one of the Russians, Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, wrote as the operation was being unmasked.

Their tasks included undermining Mrs. Clinton by supporting her Democratic primary campaign rival, Bernie Sanders, prosecutors said. Those instructions were detailed in internal documents: “Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).” Mr. Mueller identified 13 digital advertisements paid for by the Russian operation. All of them attacked Mrs. Clinton or promoted Mr. Trump.

“Hillary is a Satan, and her crimes and lies had proved just how evil she is,” one advertisement stated.

In summer 2016, as Mrs. Clinton appeared headed for a decisive general election victory, Russian operatives promoted allegations of Democratic voter fraud. That echoed Mr. Trump’s own message that he was the victim of a rigged political system.

After the election, the Russians kept up their efforts to foment dissent. In November, they staged two rallies in New York on the same day. One had the theme, “Show your support for President-Elect Trump.” The other was called, “Trump is NOT my President.”

The indictment does not say that Russia changed the outcome of the election, a fact that Mr. Rosenstein noted repeatedly. American intelligence officials have said they have no way of calculating the effect of the Russian influence.

The Federal Election Commission started its own inquiry into the Internet Research Agency last year, according to documents obtained by The New York Times, after Facebook revealed that the firm had paid more than $100,000 for politically themed ads, including ones promoting “Down With Hillary” rallies.

The commission’s inquiry was prompted by a complaint filed by the government watchdog group Common Cause that claimed that the Facebook ads violated the prohibition on foreign spending, as well as requirements mandating the disclosure of campaign spending.

The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told the RBC news website that Russian officials have not familiarized themselves with the document yet.

Mr. Mueller also revealed Friday that Richard Pinedo, of Santa Paula, Calif., had pleaded guilty to identity fraud in a case involving the sale of bank accounts over the internet. According to court papers, some of Mr. Pinedo’s customers are foreigners who are targets of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry. Mr. Pinedo has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with Mr. Mueller, court documents show.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein: “The indictment charges 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian companies for committing federal crimes while seeking to interfere in the United States political system, including the 2016 presidential election.” http://cs.pn/2EJlVbc

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein: “The indictment charges 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian companies for committing federal crimes while seeking to interfere in the United States political system, including the 2016 presidential election.” http://cs.pn/2EJlVbc

Top Russian and American officials exchanged barbs Saturday in Germany over the U.S. indictment of 13 Russians accused of an elaborate plot to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. H.R. McMaster, U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, said at the Munich Security Conference that the federal indictments showed the U.S. was becoming “more and more adept at tracing the origins of this espionage and subversion.” “As you can see with the FBI indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain,” McMaster told a Russian delegate to the conference. Just minutes before, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had dismissed the indictments as “just blabber,” according to remarks through an interpreter. “I have no response,” Lavrov said when asked for comment on the allegations. “You can publish anything, and we see those indictments multiplying, the statements multiplying.” The two men addressed the conference of top world leaders, defense officials and diplomats, giving more general back-to-back opening remarks. But both were immediately hit with blunt questions about the U.S. indictment and the broader issue of cyberattacks. In Russia, news of the indictments was met with more scorn. “There are no official claims, there are no proofs for this. That’s why they are just children’s statements,” Andrei Kutskikh, the presidential envoy for international information security, told Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. McMaster also scoffed at the suggestion that the U.S. would work with Russia on cyber security issues. “I’m surprised there are any Russian cyber experts available based on how active most of them have been undermining our democracies in the West,” he said to laughter. “So I would just say that we would love to have a cyber dialogue when Russia is sincere.” The federal indictment brought Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller represents the most detailed allegations to date of illegal Russian meddling during the campaign that sent Trump to the White House. Lavrov argued that U.S. officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, have said no country influenced the U.S. election results. “Until we see the facts, everything else is just blabber I’m sorry for this expression,” Lavrov said. The indictment charged 13 Russians with running a huge but hidden social media trolling campaign aimed in part at helping Republican Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. It outlined the first criminal charges against Russians believed to have secretly worked to influence the U.S. election’s outcome. According to the indictment, the Russian organization was funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy St. Petersburg businessman with ties to the Russian government and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Lavrov denounced “this irrational myth about this global Russian threat, traces of which are found everywhere from Brexit to the Catalan referendum.” In Russia, one of the 13 people indicted said that the U.S. justice system is unfair. Mikhail Burchik was quoted Saturday by the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda as saying that “I am very surprised that, in the opinion of the Washington court, several Russian people interfered in the elections in the United States. I do not know how the Americans came to this decision.” Burchik was identified in the indictment as executive director of an organization that allegedly sowed propaganda on social media to try to interfere with the 2016 election. He was quoted as saying that “they have one-sided justice, and it turns out that you can hang the blame on anyone.”

Indictment: Social media firms got played by Russian agentsDaily Herald
A Facebook posting, released by the House Intelligence Committee, for a group called “Woke Blacks” is photographed in Washington, Friday, Feb. 16, 2018. A federal grand jury indictment on Feb. 16, charging 13 Russians and three Russianentities with an …

Russian operators used PayPal to buy Facebook ads …, Mueller probe findsKING5.com
WASHINGTON The online payment company PayPal has been unexpectedly drawn into the Russia probe. Federal prosecutors allege that Russian criminals used PayPal to help pay for propaganda aimed at influencing voters in the 2016 election. Thirteen …

Indictment: Social media firms got played by Russian agentsWashington Post
Friday’s election-interference indictment brought by Robert Mueller, the U.S. special counsel, underscores how thoroughly social-media companies like Facebook and Twitter were played by Russian propagandists. And it’s not clear if the companies have …

Donald Trump had a few options today after Special Counsel Robert Mueller obtained indictments against thirteen Russians who conspired to rig the election in Trump’s favor. As he so often tends to do, he tried dishonestly splitting the difference between coming out swinging and hiding under his desk. He posted a single tweet in which he claimed that this vindicated him. But it only took him the one tweet to unwittingly connect himself to today’s indictments.The indictments reveal that Russia had been plotting to influence the 2016 election since 2014. Trump took that as his cue to declare himself innocent. How could he have been in on the plot to rig the election if the Russians started it in 2014, and he didn’t even decide to run for president until the middle of 2015? Here’s what he tweeted: “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President.”The trouble: this prompted social media users to collectively go digging through Trump’s past tweets, and they found this gem from 2014:Here we have Donald Trump publicly acknowledging in 2014 that he was considering running for president in the 2016 election. That fits right in with the newly established timeline of Russia having begun its plot to rig the election in 2014. Trump just made himself look more guilty, not less guilty. This tweet only got dug up today because Trump panicked and jumped on the 2014 thing without stopping to think about the ramifications of doing so.The post Donald Trump panics and unwittingly connects himself to today’s indictments of the Russiansappeared first on Palmer Report. Palmer Report

Did you see this coming? I didn’t. Not today. Not right now. I’ve spent weeks pointing out that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was about to make his biggest moves in the Trump-Russia investigation, while acknowledging that I wasn’t quite sure how he’d approach. The next visible dot on the map was obviously Mueller’s indictment or charges against Donald Trump for obstruction of justice. But I was not expecting him to make a detour today by indicting the Russians for conspiring to rig the election in Trump’s favor.What a brilliant move. Nevermind how many or few of these Russian nationals can even be hunted down overseas, extradited, and put on trial for the crimes they’ve just been charged with. But while some of these Russians will surely rush in to cut plea deals just to play it safe, that’s not the important part here. These indictments today were against Trump’s presidency.Mueller is days or weeks away from moving against Trump for obstruction of justice. We know this because a few weeks ago, Mueller informed the Trump team that he wanted to interview Trump about the obstruction within a few weeks. Whether Trump grants the interview or not, it means that the obstruction investigation is now essentially complete. Mueller has what he needs. Now comes the tricky part, where Mueller has to decide whether to try to indict a sitting U.S. President for the first time in history, or whether to try to force impeachment proceedings in Congress, or some other strategy in these unprecedented waters.So what did Robert Mueller do? He decided to knock Donald Trump to his knees politically, just before moving in on him. Now everyone in America knows that Trump’s presidency is indeed nothing more than a Russian plot against the United States, and that Trump is an illegitimate president. Trump is wounded, weakened, lying in a political ditch. Mueller couldn’t have set a better stage for himself as he prepares to take Trump down.The post Robert Mueller is just brilliant appeared first on Palmer Report. Palmer Report

By Guy Adams for the Daily MailDaily Mail
A perk of being one of the world’s wealthiest men is you can buy the most expensive of everything from homes and cars, to yachts, private jets and, let’s not forget, politicians. So it goes that, when George Soros decided to help the president of …

reopening of the FBI emails investigation is not going to hurt Mrs. Clinton – Google News

Manafort hit with another bank fraud charge by Mueller: reportRaw Story
Politico reported Friday night that Mueller’s office has found additional criminal conduct since Manafort was indicted in October for committing bank fraud and failing to register as a foreign agent. Prosecutors in Manafort’s case argued on Tuesday …

Trolls’ work fooled some on Trump teamPress Herald
A Facebook ad linked to a Russian effort to disrupt the American political process and stir up tensions around divisive social issues, released by the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, is photographed in Washington, on Friday, Feb. 16, 2018. The ad…and more »

After Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced today that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had obtained grand jury indictments against thirteen Russians who conspired to rig the election in Donald Trump’s favor, Trump fired back by claiming the indictments exonerated him. It took just a few hours for Mueller to fire back through the media, setting the record straight.According to the indictments, the Donald Trump campaign was not knowingly colluding with these thirteen Russians in particular. Trump seized the opportunity to misrepresent this, promptly tweeting “The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!” But that’s not even close to being true. Donald Trump Jr has been caught admitting in emails that he knowingly conspired with the Russian government to try to alter the outcome of the election. Several other top Trump advisers were in that same meeting, or held similar meetings or exchanges with the Russians.Robert Mueller has rarely spoken in this investigation, never in his own voice, and only occasionally through the media. So it’s notable that, less than an hour after Trump’s misleading tweet, Mueller got word to the media that he is in fact still investigating Trump-Russia collusion (link). To be clear, “collusion” isn’t a legal term. The question here is whether Trump and his people broke specific laws by conspiring with the Russians to alter the outcome of the election. We already know the answer is “yes.” Mueller will prove it.But the noteworthy part today is that Robert Mueller wasn’t willing to allow Donald Trump’s lying tweet to stand on its own. On a day in which Rod Rosenstein, the guy in charge of the Mueller investigation, made a point of holding a press conference just to make sure these Russian indictments got enough visibility, Mueller then made sure that that Trump’s false claim of “no collusion” got promptly struck down. Mueller isn’t just playing offense now; he’s increasingly doing it in public.The post Robert Mueller fires back after Donald Trump yells “no collusion” at Russian indictmentsappeared first on Palmer Report. Palmer Report

The Latest: 13 Russians accused of plot to disrupt electionNew York Daily News
A Facebook posting, released by the House Intelligence Committee, for a group called “Being Patriotic” is photographed in Washington, Friday, Feb. 16, 2018. A federal grand jury indictment on Feb. 16, charging 13 Russians and three Russian entities …

President Trump in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Friday. Mr. Trump has made little, if any public, effort to rally the nation to confront Moscow for its electoral intrusion or to defend democratic institutions against continued disruption.

They created hundreds of social media accounts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other sites to confuse and anger people about sensitive issues like immigration, religion and the Black Lives Matter movement — in some cases gaining hundreds of thousands of followers.

They staged rallies while pretending to be American grass-roots organizations. A poster at one “pro-Clinton” rally in July 2016 read “Support Hillary. Save American Muslims,” along with a fabricated quote attributed to Mrs. Clinton: “I think Sharia Law will be a powerful new direction of freedom.”

As the election drew nearer, they tried to suppress minority turnout and promoted false allegations of Democratic voter fraud. The specialist running one of the organization’s Facebook accounts, called “Secured Borders,” was criticized for not publishing enough posts and was told that “it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton.”

After the election, they continued to spread confusion and chaos, staging rallies both for and against Mr. Trump, in one case on the same day and in the same city.

All along, they took steps to cover their tracks by stealing the identities of real Americans, opening accounts on American-based servers and lying about what their money was being used for. Last September, after Facebook turned over information about Russian ad purchases to the special counsel, a specialist named Irina Kaverzina emailed a family member: “We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity (not a joke). So, I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with the colleagues.” Ms. Kaverzina continued, “I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people.”

Fake news, indeed.

Mr. Trump’s defenders, desperate to exculpate him, seized on a single word — “unwitting” — that the indictment used to describe certain “members, volunteers and supporters of the Trump campaign involved in local community outreach” who had interacted with the Russians.

In other words, as the White House subtly put it in a statement on Friday, “NO COLLUSION.” The president repeated the claim himself in a tweet, grudgingly acknowledging Russia’s “anti-US campaign,” but emphasizing that it had started “long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!”

It’s true that, as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in an announcement, these particular indictments do not allege that any American knew about the influence campaign, nor that the campaign had changed the outcome of the election. But that’s quite different from saying that there was no collusion or impact on the election. As Mr. Rosenstein also said, the special counsel’s investigation is continuing, and there are many strands the public still knows little or nothing about.

Remember, Mr. Mueller has already secured two guilty pleas, one from Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser and another from a former campaign adviser, for lying to federal authorities about their connections to Russian government officials. He has also charged Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his top aide, Rick Gates, with crimes including money laundering. Mr. Gates appears to be nearing a plea deal himself.

Then there were Russian cyberattacks on the elections systems of at least 39 states. And the hacking of emails sent among members of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign — which Mr. Trump openly encouraged.

This is all going to happen again. Intelligence and law enforcement authorities have made that clear. The question is whether Mr. Trump will at last accept the fact of Russian interference and take aggressive measures to protect American democracy. For starters, he could impose the sanctions on Russia that Congress overwhelmingly passed, and that he signed into law, last summer. Of course, this would require him to overcome his mysterious resistance to acting against Russia and to focus on protecting his own country.

The Justice Department said Mr. Mueller’s work was not complete. The indictment does not address the hacking of Democratic email systems or whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct the F.B.I. investigation into Russian interference. Mr. Mueller is negotiating with the president’s lawyers over the terms of a possible interview.

The Russian operation began four years ago, well before Mr. Trump entered the presidential race, a fact that he quickly seized on in his defense. “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President,” he wrote on Twitter. “The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!”

Thirteen Russian nationals have been charged with illegally trying to disrupt the American political process through inflammatory social media posts and organized political rallies.

OPEN Graphic

But Mr. Trump’s statement ignored the government’s conclusion that, by 2016, the Russians were “supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump” and disparaging Hillary Clinton, his opponent. Working out of the office in St. Petersburg, the Russians described waging “information warfare against the United States of America,” according to court documents.

Mr. Mueller has gathered extensive evidence of contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign: Mr. Trump’s eldest son met with a Russian lawyer in hopes of receiving political dirt on Mrs. Clinton; one adviser has admitted being tipped off in advance to Russian hacking of Democratic emails; another was in contact with a Twitter account used by Russian hackers; a federal judge found probable cause that a third adviser was an unlawful Russian agent. And the Trump campaign repeatedly and falsely denied any contacts with Russia.

Whether any of that violated federal law is the weightiest question facing Mr. Mueller, and Friday’s indictment did not answer it. But it painted a picture of a Russian operation that was multipronged, well financed and relentless.

Russian operatives traveled across the United States to gather intelligence and foment political discord. They worked with an unidentified American who advised them to focus their efforts on what they viewed as “purple” election battleground states, including Colorado, Virginia and Florida, the indictment said.

In August 2016, prosecutors said, Russians posed as Americans and coordinated with Trump campaign staff to organize rallies in Florida.

Such anecdotes are rare examples of how intelligence agencies work covertly to influence political outcomes abroad. The C.I.A. has conducted such operations for decades, but both Mr. Mueller’s indictment and an intelligence assessment last year present a startling example — unprecedented in its scope and audacity — of a foreign government working to help elect an American president.

The indictment does not explicitly say the Russian government sponsored the effort, but American intelligence officials have publicly said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directed and oversaw it. The indictment notes that two of the Russian firms involved hold Russian government contracts.

“This is clearly a message document,” Robert S. Litt, the former general counsel to the director of national intelligence, said of the indictment. “Mueller wants to end the debate over whether there was Russian interference in the election.”

The Russian nationals were accused of working with the Internet Research Agency, which had a budget of millions of dollars and was designed to reach millions of Americans. The defendants were charged with carrying out a massive fraud against the American government and conspiring to obstruct enforcement of federal laws.

None of the defendants were arrested — Russia does not generally extradite its citizens to the United States. But prosecutors use such indictments to name and shame operatives, making it harder for them to work undetected in the future. If they travel abroad, they risk capture and extradition.

Russian computer specialists, divided into day teams and night teams, created hundreds of social media accounts that eventually attracted hundreds of thousands of online followers. They posed as Christian activists, anti-immigration groups and supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement. One account posed as the Tennessee Republican Party and generated hundreds of thousands of followers, prosecutors said.

Separate divisions of the Internet Research Agency were in charge of graphics, data analysis and information technology, according to the indictment.

“I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people,” one of the Russians, Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, wrote as the operation was being unmasked.

Their tasks included undermining Mrs. Clinton by supporting her Democratic primary campaign rival, Bernie Sanders, prosecutors said. Those instructions were detailed in internal documents: “Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).” Mr. Mueller identified 13 digital advertisements paid for by the Russian operation. All of them attacked Mrs. Clinton or promoted Mr. Trump.

“Hillary is a Satan, and her crimes and lies had proved just how evil she is,” one advertisement stated.

In summer 2016, as Mrs. Clinton appeared headed for a decisive general election victory, Russian operatives promoted allegations of Democratic voter fraud. That echoed Mr. Trump’s own message that he was the victim of a rigged political system.

After the election, the Russians kept up their efforts to foment dissent. In November, they staged two rallies in New York on the same day. One had the theme, “Show your support for President-Elect Trump.” The other was called, “Trump is NOT my President.”

The indictment does not say that Russia changed the outcome of the election, a fact that Mr. Rosenstein noted repeatedly. American intelligence officials have said they have no way of calculating the effect of the Russian influence.

The Federal Election Commission started its own inquiry into the Internet Research Agency last year, according to documents obtained by The New York Times, after Facebook revealed that the firm had paid more than $100,000 for politically themed ads, including ones promoting “Down With Hillary” rallies.

The commission’s inquiry was prompted by a complaint filed by the government watchdog group Common Cause that claimed that the Facebook ads violated the prohibition on foreign spending, as well as requirements mandating the disclosure of campaign spending.

The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told the RBC news website that Russian officials have not familiarized themselves with the document yet.

Mr. Mueller also revealed Friday that Richard Pinedo, of Santa Paula, Calif., had pleaded guilty to identity fraud in a case involving the sale of bank accounts over the internet. According to court papers, some of Mr. Pinedo’s customers are foreigners who are targets of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry. Mr. Pinedo has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with Mr. Mueller, court documents show.

The field research to guide the attack appears to have begun in earnest in June 2014. Two Russian women, Aleksandra Y. Krylova and Anna V. Bogacheva, obtained visas for what turned out to be a three-week reconnaissance tour of the United States, including to key electoral states like Colorado, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. The visa application of a third Russian, Robert S. Bovda, was rejected.

The two women bought cameras, SIM cards and disposable cellphones for the trip and devised “evacuation scenarios” in case their real purpose was detected. In all, they visited nine states — California, Illinois, Louisiana, New York and Texas, in addition to the others — “to gather intelligence” on American politics, the indictment says. Ms. Krylova sent a report about their findings to one of her bosses in St. Petersburg.

Another Russian operative visited Atlanta in November 2014 on a similar mission, the indictment says. It does not name that operative, a possible indication that he or she is cooperating with the investigation, legal experts said.

The operation also included the creation of hundreds of email, PayPal and bank accounts and even fraudulent drivers’ licenses issued to fictitious Americans. The Russians also used the identities of real Americans from stolen Social Security numbers.

At the height of the 2016 campaign, the effort employed more than 80 people, who used secure virtual private network connections to computer servers leased in the United States to hide the fact that they were in Russia. From there, they posed as American activists, emailing, advising and making payments to real Americans who were duped into believing that they were part of the same cause.

The playing field was mainly social media, where the Russians splashed catchy memes and hash tags. Facebook has estimated that the fraudulent Russian posts reached 126 million Americans on its platforms alone.

The Russian operatives contacted, among others, a real Texas activist who, evidently assuming they were Americans, advised them to focus on “purple states like Colorado, Virginia & Florida.” After that, F.B.I. agents found that the phrase “purple states” became a mantra for the Russian operation.

Clinton Watts, a former F.B.I. agent who has tracked the Russian campaign closely, said that he had no doubt that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was behind the effort, which was carried out by companies controlled by his friend and ally, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin. But he noted that the so-called trolls employed by Mr. Prigozhin took elaborate steps to obscure their identities and locations and to avoid leaving government fingerprints.

“From the beginning, they built this so it could be plausibly denied,” Mr. Watts said. Mr. Putin has repeatedly denied any government role in hacking and disinformation aimed at the United States, while coyly allowing that patriotic Russians may have carried out such attacks on their own.

Andrew S. Weiss, a Russia specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, called the reported origin of the effort in April 2014 “crucially important.”

“That’s a little more than a month after the annexation of Crimea and the launch of Russia’s covert war in eastern Ukraine,” Mr. Weiss said. The resulting crisis “vaporized U.S.-Russian relations overnight,” he said, setting off multiple Russian efforts “to undermine the United States, both in terms of our leading role in the world, but also via our own domestic political vulnerabilities.”

Mr. Weiss said the fact that private companies conducted the social media campaign simply made it cheaper and more difficult to trace.

Mr. Putin has been angry with Mrs. Clinton since at least 2011, when she was secretary of state and he accused her of inciting unrest in Russia as he faced large-scale political protests. Mrs. Clinton, he said, had sent “a signal” to “some actors in our country” after elections that were condemned as fraudulent by both international and Russian observers.

Mr. Mueller’s indictment does not present evidence that the campaign overseen by Mr. Prigozhin was ordered by Mr. Putin. American officials have traced other elements of the Russian meddling, notably the hacking and leaking of leading Democrats’ emails, to Russian intelligence agencies carrying out Mr. Putin’s orders.

While the indictment certainly undermines Mr. Trump’s blanket assertions that the Russian interference is a political “hoax,” it does not accuse anyone from his campaign or any other American of knowingly aiding in the effort.

By the beginning of 2016, the Russian strategy was in place, and the conspirators began their campaign to sow conflict. An internal message circulated through the Internet Research Agency telling operatives to post content online that focused on “politics in the USA.”

“Use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump—we support them),” the message read.

The scope of the operation was sweeping. The Russians assumed their fake identifies to communicate with campaign volunteers for Mr. Trump and grass-roots groups supporting his candidacy. They bought pro-Trump and anti-Clinton political advertisements on Facebook and other social media. They used an Instagram account to try to suppress turnout of minority voters and campaign for Ms. Stein, the Green Party candidate.

Applying nearly two years’ worth of political research, the Russians used all of these tactics to target voters in swing states, notably Florida, according to the indictment.

By summer 2016, the Russian operatives were mobilizing efforts for coming “Florida Goes Trump” rallies across the state, all planned for Aug. 20. Using false identities, they contacted Trump campaign staff in Florida to offer their services. One operative sent a message to a campaign official saying that the group Being Patriotic was organizing a statewide rally “to support Mr. Trump.”

“You know, simple yelling on the internet is not enough,” the message read, according to the indictment. “There should be real action. We organized rallies in New York before. Now we’re focusing on purple states such as Florida.”

Taking to Facebook, the Russians used the pseudonym Matt Skiber to advertise the rally. “If we lose Florida, we lose America. We can’t let it happen, right? What about organizing a YUGE pro-Trump flash mob in every Florida town?” the message read, using one of Mr. Trump’s favorite verbal flourishes.

They reached out to local organizations to build momentum for the coming rallies and assign specific tasks.

They paid one unwitting Trump supporter to build a cage on a flatbed truck that housed another person wearing a costume that portrayed Mrs. Clinton in a prison uniform.

After the rallies in Florida, the group applied similar tactics to organize rallies in Pennsylvania, New York and elsewhere.

Weeks before the election, the Russians ratcheted up social media activity aimed at dampening support for Mrs. Clinton.

In mid-October, Woke Blacks, an Instagram account run by the Internet Research Agency, carried the message “hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.”

Then, just days before Americans went to the polls, another Instagram account controlled by the Russians — called Blacktivist — urged its followers to “choose peace” and vote for Ms. Stein, who was expected to siphon support from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

Judicial Watch Director of Investigations Chris Farrell on the problems with the FBI and why the FBI needs to be shut down.

Judicial Watch Director of Investigations Chris Farrell is calling for the complete abolishment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) beginning with the resignation of its director, Christopher Wray, after failing to protect American citizens.

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The law enforcement agency has come under scrutiny for becoming too politicized in the probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and the Russian dossier that may have helped authorities obtain FISA warrants to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign officials.

“I would go back 200 years to the U.S. Marshal Service. I would create a new division for investigation and in about 6-8 months, I would shut the FBI down,” Farrell said during an interview on FOX Business “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

The Judicial Watch director said agents would be allowed to laterally apply to a new investigative unit and agents would be allowed to apply to a new investigative arm of the U.S. Marshal Service. The FBI would cease to exist.

Learn more about what the dark web is, and why it should matter to you as a part of your identity protection strategy.

“There’s a systemic institutional problem. We can walk back to the Tsarnaev brothers where they missed the leads, multiple leads on them. You can go back to Whitey Bulger for that matter. You can go back to existing corruption in El Paso, Texas,” Farrell said.

In April 2013, Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, set off two bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The horrific explosion killed three people and injured more than 260.

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James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger, the infamous Massachusetts mob boss, was arrested in 2011 after 15 years being hunted by the FBI.

“Here’s the problem. If nothing changes, nothing changes,” Farrell said. “There’s gotta be a radical, very penetrating severe examination and you have to turn over some furniture here.”

WASHINGTON — In an extraordinary indictment, the U.S. special counsel accused 13 Russians Friday of an elaborate plot to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, charging them with running a huge but hidden social media trolling campaign aimed in part at helping Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The federal indictment, brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, represents the most detailed allegations to date of illegal Russian meddling during the campaign that sent Trump to the White House. It also marks the first criminal charges against Russians believed to have secretly worked to influence the outcome.

The Russian organization was funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the indictment says. He is a wealthy St. Petersburg businessman with ties to the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin.

Trump quickly claimed vindication Friday, noting in a tweet that the alleged interference efforts began in 2014 — “long before I announced that I would run for President.”

“The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!” he tweeted.

But the indictment does not resolve the collusion question at the heart of the continuing Mueller probe, which before Friday had produced charges against four Trump associates. U.S. intelligence agencies have previously said the Russian government interfered to benefit Trump, including by orchestrating the hacking of Democratic emails, and Mueller has been assessing whether the campaign coordinated with the Kremlin.

The latest indictment does not focus on the hacking but instead centers on a social media propaganda effort that began in 2014 and continued past the election, with the goal of producing distrust in the American political process. Trump himself has been reluctant to acknowledge the interference and any role that it might have played in propelling him to the White House.

The indictment does not allege that any American knowingly participated in Russian meddling, or suggest that Trump campaign associates had more than “unwitting” contact with some of the defendants who posed as Americans during election season.

But it does lay out a vast and wide-ranging Russian effort to sway political opinion in the United States through a strategy that involved creating Internet postings in the names of Americans whose identities had been stolen; staging political rallies while posing as American political activists and paying people in the U.S. to promote or disparage candidates.

While foreign meddling in U.S. campaigns is not new, the indictment for an effort of this scope and digital sophistication is unprecedented.

“This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the internet,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Friday. “The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy. We must not allow them to succeed.”

The 13 Russians are not in custody and not likely to ever face trial. The Justice Department has for years supported indicting foreign defendants in absentia as a way of publicly shaming them and effectively barring them from foreign travel.

Full text of the indictment:

The surreptitious campaign was organized by the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russian troll farm that the indictment says sought to conduct “information warfare against the United States of America.”

The company, among three Russian entities named in the indictment, had a multimillion-dollar budget and hundreds of workers divided by specialties and assigned to day and night shifts. According to prosecutors, the company was funded by companies controlled by Prigozhin, the wealthy Russian who has been dubbed “Putin’s chef” because his restaurants and catering businesses have hosted the Kremlin leader’s dinners with foreign dignitaries.

Prigozhin said Friday he was not upset by the indictment.

“Americans are very impressionable people,” he was quoted as saying by Russia’s state news agency. They “see what they want to see.”

Also Friday, Mueller announced a guilty plea from a California man who unwittingly sold bank accounts to Russians involved in the interference effort.

The election-meddling organization, looking to conceal its Russian roots, purchased space on computer servers within the U.S., used email accounts from U.S. internet service providers and created and controlled social media pages with huge numbers of followers on divisive issues such as immigration, religion and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Starting in April 2016, the indictment says, the Russian agency bought political ads on social media supporting Trump and opposing Clinton without reporting expenditures to the Federal Election Commission or registering as foreign agents. Among the ads: “JOIN our #HillaryClintonForPrison2016” and “Donald wants to defeat terrorism … Hillary wants to sponsor it.”

“They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump,” the indictment states.

The indictment details contacts targeting three unnamed officials in the Trump campaign’s Florida operation. In each instance, the Russians used false U.S. personas to contact the officials. The indictment doesn’t say if any of them responded, and there’s no allegation that any of the campaign officials knew they were communicating with Russians.

Two of the defendants traveled to the U.S. in June 2014 to gather intelligence on social media sites and identify targets for their operations, the indictment alleges. Following the trip, the group collected further intelligence by contacting U.S. political and social media activists while posing as U.S. citizens. They were guided by one contact to target “purple states like Colorado, Virginia and Florida,” prosecutors say.

Cruz and Rubio ran against Trump in the Republican primary; Sanders opposed Clinton in the Democratic primary.

According to one internal communication described by prosecutors, the specialists were instructed to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump_we support them).” And according to one internal review, a specialist was criticized for having a low number of posts criticizing Clinton. The person was told “it is imperative to intensify criticizing Hillary Clinton” in future posts.

The indictment also asserts that the posts encouraged minority groups not to vote or to vote for third parties and alleged Democratic voter fraud.

Before a rally in Florida, the Russians paid one person to build a cage on a flatbed truck and another to wear a costume portraying Clinton in a prison uniform. But they also organized some rallies opposing Trump, including one in New York after the election called “Trump is NOT my president.”

The Russians destroyed evidence of their activities as Mueller’s investigation picked up, with one of those indicted sending an email in September 2017 to a family member that said the FBI had “busted” them so they were covering their tracks.

That person, Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, wrote the family member, “I created all of these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people.”

MOSCOW – The 13 Russians indicted by the United States for interfering in its 2016 presidential election have been connected to a “troll factory” churning out online posts aimed at influencing public opinion.

He has brushed off the indictment, telling RIA Novosti state news agency: “I am not at all upset that I am in this list. If they want to see a devil, let them.”

The unsealed US indictment said that those on the list except Prigozhin worked in various capacities for the Internet Research Agency, the name of the “troll factory” in the northwestern city of Saint Petersburg that allegedly worked to “interfere with the US political system.”

The indictment said that Prigozhin and companies he controlled allegedly provided the agency with funding.

Prigozhin has denied any connection with the Internet Research Agency, Interfax news agency reported.

– Fake accounts –

Russian media first reported on the “troll factory” in 2014, saying it ran thousands of fake accounts on social media. RBK media group reported it was initially used to influence domestic politics but from 2015 it was redirected to work on a US audience.

RBK reported in October that around 90 people worked in the “US department” of the troll factory.

A woman who had worked at the agency for two months told AFP in 2015 that she was paid to write messages praising Russian President Vladimir Putin on blogs under several different names, as well as writing hundreds of comments on other sites.

– ‘Putin’s chef’ –

Prigozhin has been under US sanctions since December 2016 for having “materially assisted” senior officials of the Russian Federation and for “extensive business dealings” with the defence ministry.

Nicknamed by Russian media “Putin’s chef,” he owns a company that has done catering for Kremlin receptions and has been photographed with the president.

His restaurant and catering group Konkord, or Concord, has been subject to US sanctions since 2017 and is also named in the indictment. It has won catering contracts with the defence ministry.

Prigozhin has also been linked by Russian media to the mercenary group Wagner, which has reportedly sent its operatives to Syria to fight alongside Russian armed forces. He has denied any connection to Wagner.

Prigozhin has also been linked by Russian media to a company called Yevro Polis, which in turn has been linked to Wagner. Yevro Polis, or Evro Polis, has been under US sanctions since January.

The US said it was blacklisting the company because it is “owned or controlled” by Prigozhin.

It said the company contracted with the government of Syria to protect Syrian oil fields in exchange for a 25 percent share in oil and gas production from the fields.

Fontanka.ru reported in summer 2017 that Yevro Polis was involved in a secret deal to take control of certain oil and gas deposits and refineries in Syria in return for freeing oil and gas sites from rebel control and providing security at the sites. It cited a source close to the energy ministry.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Long before he was indicted by the United States in a case involving the troll factory that spearheaded Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 United States elections, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin emerged from prison just as the Soviet Union was collapsing and opened a hot-dog …

FILE – In this file photo taken on Sunday, April 19, 2015, a women enters the four-storey building known as the “troll factory” in St. Petersburg, Russia. The U.S. government allege the Internet Research Agency started interfering as early as 2014 in U.S. politics, extending to the 2016 presidential election, saying the agency was funded by a St. Petersburg businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin.

FILE – In this file photo taken on Sunday, April 19, 2015, a women enters the four-storey building known as the “troll factory” in St. Petersburg, Russia. The U.S. government allege the Internet Research

Did you see this coming? I didn’t. Not today. Not right now. I’ve spent weeks pointing out that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was about to make his biggest moves in the Trump-Russia investigation, while acknowledging that I wasn’t quite sure how he’d approach. The next visible dot on the map was obviously Mueller’s indictment or charges against Donald Trump for obstruction of justice. But I was not expecting him to make a detour today by indicting the Russians for conspiring to rig the election in Trump’s favor.

What a brilliant move. Nevermind how many or few of these Russian nationals can even be hunted down overseas, extradited, and put on trial for the crimes they’ve just been charged with. But while some of these Russians will surely rush in to cut plea deals just to play it safe, that’s not the important part here. These indictments today were against Trump’s presidency.

Mueller is days or weeks away from moving against Trump for obstruction of justice. We know this because a few weeks ago, Mueller informed the Trump team that he wanted to interview Trump about the obstruction within a few weeks. Whether Trump grants the interview or not, it means that the obstruction investigation is now essentially complete. Mueller has what he needs. Now comes the tricky part, where Mueller has to decide whether to try to indict a sitting U.S. President for the first time in history, or whether to try to force impeachment proceedings in Congress, or some other strategy in these unprecedented waters.

So what did Robert Mueller do? He decided to knock Donald Trump to his knees politically, just before moving in on him. Now everyone in America knows that

Trump’s presidency is indeed nothing more than a Russian plot against the United States, and that Trump is an illegitimate president.

Trump is wounded, weakened, lying in a political ditch. Mueller couldn’t have set a better stage for himself as he prepares to take Trump down.

Judicial Watch Director of Investigations Chris Farrell on the problems with the FBI and why the FBI needs to be shut down.

Judicial Watch Director of Investigations Chris Farrell is calling for the complete abolishment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) beginning with the resignation of its director, Christopher Wray, after failing to protect American citizens.

Continue Reading Below

The law enforcement agency has come under scrutiny for becoming too politicized in the probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and the Russian dossier that may have helped authorities obtain FISA warrants to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign officials.

“I would go back 200 years to the U.S. Marshal Service. I would create a new division for investigation and in about 6-8 months, I would shut the FBI down,” Farrell said during an interview on FOX Business “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

The Judicial Watch director said agents would be allowed to laterally apply to a new investigative unit and agents would be allowed to apply to a new investigative arm of the U.S. Marshal Service. The FBI would cease to exist.

Learn more about what the dark web is, and why it should matter to you as a part of your identity protection strategy.

“There’s a systemic institutional problem. We can walk back to the Tsarnaev brothers where they missed the leads, multiple leads on them. You can go back to Whitey Bulger for that matter. You can go back to existing corruption in El Paso, Texas,” Farrell said.

In April 2013, Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, set off two bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The horrific explosion killed three people and injured more than 260.

Continue Reading Below

ADVERTISEMENT

James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger, the infamous Massachusetts mob boss, was arrested in 2011 after 15 years being hunted by the FBI.

“Here’s the problem. If nothing changes, nothing changes,” Farrell said. “There’s gotta be a radical, very penetrating severe examination and you have to turn over some furniture here.”

WASHINGTON — In an extraordinary indictment, the U.S. special counsel accused 13 Russians Friday of an elaborate plot to disrupt the 2016 presidential election, charging them with running a huge but hidden social media trolling campaign aimed in part at helping Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The federal indictment, brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, represents the most detailed allegations to date of illegal Russian meddling during the campaign that sent Trump to the White House. It also marks the first criminal charges against Russians believed to have secretly worked to influence the outcome.

The Russian organization was funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the indictment says. He is a wealthy St. Petersburg businessman with ties to the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin.

While foreign meddling in U.S. campaigns is not new, the indictment for an effort of this scope and digital sophistication is unprecedented.

“This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the internet,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Friday. “The indictment alleges that the Russian conspirators want to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy. We must not allow them to succeed.”

The 13 Russians are not in custody and not likely to ever face trial. The Justice Department has for years supported indicting foreign defendants in absentia as a way of publicly shaming them and effectively barring them from foreign travel.

The surreptitious campaign was organized by the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russian troll farm that the indictment says sought to conduct “information warfare against the United States of America.”

Q13 FOX
But they also organized some rallies opposing Trump, including one in New York after the election called Trump is NOT mypresident. The Russians destroyed evidence of their activities as Mueller’s investigation picked up, with one of those indicted…

M.N.: “Putin’s Chef” cannot cook!

Too much salt, pepper, and exotic spices; and no common sense and no good taste. Just what they feed the Russian children for their school lunches, produced by his companies. Fire the scoundrel and exile him to Siberia, to cater for the rich Chukchis and Eskimos (frozen fish in good old Soviet sweet and sour source)! Putin, get a new cook! Henry Kissinger can recommend a really good one, with the impeccable Republican credentials. Go for it! Let him cook something new and exciting, something like “The Sanctions Borscht Special for the Kremlin elites”. They will love it and will give Prigozhin The Big KGB Golden Star and Medal if he did not get them by now already.

“Though the indictment does not allege that the Russian activities altered the outcome of the election, it doesn’t foreclose that possibility. Given how close the election was in several key states, proving whether any particular activity might have changed the outcome is all but impossible.

“There’s no way to know what the impact was.

We really don’t know the scale, we really don’t know whose minds were changed,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and researcher on cyber-influence campaigns…

The details in the indictment show that the Russian campaign was far more sophisticated and serious than previously known, Watts said. The ways in which the Russians concealed their identities and made their operation look “authentically American” in order to trick Americans into helping them provided evidence of a sophisticated operation with ties to Russian intelligence, he added.

“This is not what just any goofball could do,” he said. “They got real Americans to do influence for them, unwittingly. That’s next-level.”

…

The Russians created fake social media accounts, posing as Americans and in some cases using stolen identities of real Americans, to post messages about divisive issues such as guns and immigration.”

FILE – In this file photo taken on Sunday, April 19, 2015, a women enters the four-storey building known as the “troll factory” in St. Petersburg, Russia. The U.S. government allege the Internet Research Agency started interfering as early as 2014 in U.S. politics, extending to the 2016 presidential election, saying the agency was funded by a St. Petersburg businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin.

FILE – In this file photo taken on Sunday, April 19, 2015, a women enters the four-storey building known as the “troll factory” in St. Petersburg, Russia. The U.S. government allege the Internet Research

WASHINGTON (AP) — A look at some of the key players in the Trump-Russia probe after a federal indictment charged 13 Russians in a plot to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election:

PUTIN’S CHEF

One of the key figures indicted with plotting to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential is a Russian restaurateur believed to have ties to President Vladimir Putin.

An entrepreneur from St. Petersburg, Yevgeny Prigozhin has been dubbed “Putin’s chef” by Russian media because his restaurants and catering businesses have hosted the Kremlin leader’s dinners with foreign dignitaries. In the more than 10 years since establishing a relationship with Putin, Prigozhin’s business has expanded to services for the military.

Donald Trump has authorised the release of a secret memo which alleges misconduct by FBI officials that are investigating his 2016 presidential campaign. The release ramps up the Trump administration’s fight to delegitimize claims that the billionaire’s campaign team conspired with the Russians to win the election. The House Intelligence Committee made the memo public despite opposition from intelligence and law enforcement officials. The memo alleges that government officials favoured Democrats over Republicans and federal law enforcement abused their authority when they requested permission to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. “I think it’s terrible. It’s a disgrace what’s going on in this country,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “When you look at that, and you see that, a lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that.” Earlier today, Trump took to Twitter to argue that senior officials in the FBI and Justice Department were biased. Both the FBI and Justice Department have denied wrongdoing and opposed the public release of the memo. Republican senator John McCain said the memo’s release served only to distract Americans from the threat of Russian president Vladimir Putin. “The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests — no party’s no president’s, only Putin’s,” McCain said. “The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia’s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why special counsel Mueller’s investigation must proceed unimpeded. “Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the lens of politics and manufacturing political sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.” Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been leading the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections since May 2017. He is also thought to be examining if President Donald Trump’s interference with the Russia probe constitutes an obstruction of justice.

Donald Trump has authorised the release of a secret memo which alleges misconduct by FBI officials that are investigating his 2016 presidential campaign. The release ramps up the Trump administration’s fight to delegitimize claims that the billionaire’s campaign team conspired with the Russians to win the election. The House Intelligence Committee made the memo public despite opposition from intelligence and law enforcement officials. The memo alleges that government officials favoured Democrats over Republicans and federal law enforcement abused their authority when they requested permission to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. “I think it’s terrible. It’s a disgrace what’s going on in this country,” Trump told reporters on Friday. “When you look at that, and you see that, a lot of people should be ashamed of themselves and much worse than that.” Earlier today, Trump took to Twitter to argue that senior officials in the FBI and Justice Department were biased. Both the FBI and Justice Department have denied wrongdoing and opposed the public release of the memo. Republican senator John McCain said the memo’s release served only to distract Americans from the threat of Russian president Vladimir Putin. “The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests — no party’s no president’s, only Putin’s,” McCain said. “The American people deserve to know all of the facts surrounding Russia’s ongoing efforts to subvert our democracy, which is why special counsel Mueller’s investigation must proceed unimpeded. “Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the lens of politics and manufacturing political sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.” Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been leading the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections since May 2017. He is also thought to be examining if President Donald Trump’s interference with the Russia probe constitutes an obstruction of justice.

Media: Euronews

Prigozhin’s assets also include an oil trading firm that reportedly has been sending private Russian fighters to Syria. Prigozhin is on the list of those sanctioned by the U.S.

In comments to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti, Prigozhin dismissed the indictment.

“Americans are very impressionable people,” he was quoted as saying. “They see what they want to see.”

THE TROLL FACTORY

Based in St. Petersburg, Putin’s hometown, the Russian Internet Research Agency employs bloggers and online commentators to influence public opinion in Russia and abroad.

The indictment says that the company was funded by Prigzhin and that it purchased internet advertisements in the names of Americans whose identities they had stolen, staged political rallies while posing as American political activists and paid people in the U.S. to promote or disparage candidates. They started out by posting pro-Russian or controversial comments on social media and popular web sites and then developed more sophisticated tactics.

Analysts and journalists found that some of the accounts — such as the now-deleted and rabidly pro-Trump @TEN_GOP — accrued national followings and were retweeted by a range of figures as well as several members of Trump’s team, including ex-National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and one of Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr.

Soon enough, they were also organizing flesh-and-blood protests on American soil and being promoted by some of the most senior politicians in the land.

‘UNWITTING’ INDIVIDUALS

Some Trump campaign officials also helped the Russian meddling — unknowingly, the indictment says. Some of the defendants posed as Americans and communicated with “unwitting individuals” associated with the Trump election team in order to coordinate activities, according to the document. Sometimes the Russians used fake U.S. personas co communicate with Trump officials doing local outreach and those officials would then distribute their materials via social media. There was no immediate comment from the White House on this matter.

HOW ONE RUSSIAN OPERATED

The FBI’s indictment carries new tidbits about how its operatives stole Americans’ Social Security numbers and drivers’ licenses to help pull off their fakery.

It appears that the FBI had access to the group’s internal communications. In the case of agency worker Irina Kaverzina, for example, the FBI cites an email she wrote to her family saying: “We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity (not a joke). So, I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with the colleagues.” Later, Kaverzina goes on: “I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed it was their people.”

THE CHIEF OF THE INVESTIGATION

Robert Mueller was appointed FBI director shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and stayed on in the position for the next 12 years, transforming the bureau into a national intelligence agency. He retired from government in 2013 and joined a private law firm where he conducted high-profile investigations. He was appointed special counsel on May 17, 2017, by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

mikenova shared this story from www.sentinelsource.com – RSS Results in mcclatchy of type article.

WASHINGTON — Special Counsel Robert Mueller 3rd indicted 13 Russians and three Russian companies Friday, accusing them of using stolen identities, fake campaign events and hundreds of social media accounts while spending millions of rubles to interfere in the 2016 presidential election in a secret effort to aid the Trump campaign.

The 37-page indictment, the first charges by Mueller’s office accusing Moscow of illegal meddling in the election, says that the Internet Research Agency, a Russian firm known for using troll accounts to post on news sites, orchestrated the interference campaign and that its operatives tried to communicate with at least three unnamed Trump campaign officials using fake identities.

Although the indictment alleges that the Russians contacted unnamed people in the Trump campaign, it does not allege that any Trump campaign officials knowingly cooperated with the effort.

“There is no allegation that any American was a willing participant” in the Russian plan, and there is no allegation that it altered the outcome of the election, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein said in a brief news conference discussing the indictment.

Nonetheless, the indictment seriously undermines President Trump’s repeated contention that the entire Russia investigation is a “hoax” or “witch hunt.” It details specific activities the Russians took, initially focused on creating general discord in the U.S., but eventually focused specifically on boosting Trump’s campaign.

At least some of the indicted people have previously been identified as having close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump had been briefed on the indictment.

A few hours later, Trump responded with a tweet, suggesting that the indictment resolved questions about whether his campaign collaborated with Moscow.

“Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!” he said.

The indictment, apparently quoting internal Russian documents, says the operation began with a “strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system” in general before focusing on backing Trump.

At various times during the campaign, the Russians undertook activities disparaging Trump’s Republican rivals, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida.

The Russians also worked to help Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, in his effort to defeat Clinton in the Democratic primaries, and Jill Stein, whose Green Party campaign reduced Clinton’s votes in the general election in some states.

Though the indictment does not allege that the Russian activities altered the outcome of the election, it doesn’t foreclose that possibility. Given how close the election was in several key states, proving whether any particular activity might have changed the outcome is all but impossible.

“There’s no way to know what the impact was. We really don’t know the scale, we really don’t know whose minds were changed,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and researcher on cyber-influence campaigns.

One key element of the campaign, however, clearly might have worsened a Clinton vulnerability. The Russians aimed a significant part of their effort toward alienating minority voters, with an eye toward getting them to stay home rather than vote. Low minority turnout was one element of Clinton’s loss in some major states, such as Michigan.

The details in the indictment show that the Russian campaign was far more sophisticated and serious than previously known, Watts said. The ways in which the Russians concealed their identities and made their operation look “authentically American” in order to trick Americans into helping them provided evidence of a sophisticated operation with ties to Russian intelligence, he added.

“This is not what just any goofball could do,” he said. “They got real Americans to do influence for them, unwittingly. That’s next-level.”

The indictment accuses the 13 Russians and three businesses of “impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”

Rosenstein said the Justice Department had not yet had contact with Russian officials about extraditing any of the accused.

One of those charged was Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a wealthy Russian businessman and caterer who has been publicly identified as a close associate of Putin’s.

A company controlled by Prigozhin, Concord Management and Consulting, funded and directed the interference campaign in the U.S. and other countries, employing the Internet Research Agency, a shadowy internet troll factory that operated from St. Petersburg in Russia, according to the indictment, which refers to the agency as “the organization.”

In 2014, the organization created a special department focused on using YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms to influence the U.S. presidential election.

More than 80 employees were assigned to the project and by 2016, its monthly budget exceeded $1.2 million, the charging documents say.

The Russians created fake social media accounts, posing as Americans and in some cases using stolen identities of real Americans, to post messages about divisive issues such as guns and immigration.

The attempts to sow division continued after the election, Rosenstein said, noting that the Russians staged rallies in New York to support and oppose Trump on the same day.

Democrats said the indictment vindicated Mueller’s investigation.

”For all of those who have been asking, ‘Where is the evidence of a crime?’ — this is it. This is the criminal conspiracy,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

”This is what President Trump and his allies have repeatedly called a ‘hoax’ and ‘fake news.’ This is what they tried to cover up,” Cummings said. “This is what we might never have known if President Trump had been successful in shutting down this investigation.”

The indictment suggests that Mueller’s investigators have obtained internal documents from the Internet Research Agency that shed light on its internal operations. The charging documents also quote from personal emails of Russians involved in the interference, indicating that Mueller has gotten access to sensitive U.S. intelligence communications intercepts.

”We had a slight crisis at work, the FBI busted our activity (not a joke),” one of the Russians, who was working in the U.S., wrote in September to family members back home.

The apparent FBI raid came after Facebook and other social media platforms began cooperating with Mueller’s investigation, supplying information about Russian-controlled accounts.

According to the indictment, the Russian operatives bought credit card and bank account numbers online to evade the security checks at PayPal.

On Friday, Mueller’s office revealed that one of those who sold account numbers, Richard Pinedo, 28, of Santa Paula, Calif., had pleaded guilty to one count of identity fraud.

The criminal charge against Pinedo says he knowingly dealt with people outside the U.S., both in buying and selling account numbers, but a law enforcement official said there is no evidence that he knew he was dealing with a Russian intelligence operation.

The indictment describes how several defendants in 2014 “traveled to the United States under false pretenses for the purpose of collecting intelligence to inform the organization’s operations,” making stops in California, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, New York and Georgia.

The visit was conducted with many of the trappings of an intelligence operation, complete with drop phones, evacuation scenarios and a virtual private network to allow the Russians to conceal the origin of their social media posts.

Concealment of their identities was key to the Russian effort, Rosenstein said. “The nature of the scheme was, the defendants took extraordinary steps to make it appear that that they were ordinary American political activists,” he said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Russian Internet agency oversaw a criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign to support Donald Trump and disparage Hillary Clinton, said an indictment released on Friday that revealed more details than previously known about Moscow’s purported effort to interfere.

The office of U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russians and three Russian companies. The court document said those accused “had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

The indictment said Russians adopted false online personas to push divisive messages; traveled to the United States to collect intelligence; and staged political rallies while posing as Americans. In one case, it said, the Russians paid an unidentified person to build a cage aboard a flatbed truck and another to wear a costume “portraying Clinton in a prison uniform.”

The surprise 37-page indictment could alter the divisive U.S. domestic debate over Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, undercutting some Republicans who, along with Trump, have attacked Mueller’s probe.

“These Russians engaged in a sinister and systematic attack on our political system. It was a conspiracy to subvert the process, and take aim at democracy itself,” said Paul Ryan, Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The indictment is silent on the question of whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin, which Mueller is investigating.

In a Tweet on Friday, Trump said: “Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!”

INVESTIGATION CONTINUES

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees Mueller’s work, told reporters in announcing the charges that the investigation was not finished. The special counsel’s office last year charged four other people.

The indictment broadly echoes the conclusions of a January 2017 U.S. intelligence assessment, which found that Russia had meddled in the election, and that its goals eventually included aiding Trump. In November 2016, Trump won a surprise victory over Democratic Party candidate Clinton.

Mueller’s indictment did not tie the meddling effort to the Russian government. But the earlier U.S. intelligence assessment said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to influence the U.S. election.

Trump has never unequivocally accepted the U.S. intelligence report and has denounced Mueller’s probe into whether his campaign colluded with the Kremlin as a “witch hunt.”

Some of those charged, posing as Americans, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign, the indictment said. Last year, two former Trump campaign aides pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI – charges brought by Mueller’s office.

The indictment of the Russians, coupled with the FBI disclosure that it failed to heed a warning about the Florida high school shooter, were blows to the White House, still reeling from the fallout of a scandal involving a former aide accused of domestic abuse by two ex-wives.

Trump, who had hoped to focus the entire week on his infrastructure proposal, was closeted in the Oval Office as the reports rolled in, and his communications team was slow to respond to the ever-growing list of queries.

‘CONSPIRATORS’

Rosenstein told a press conference: “The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.”

The indictment describes a sophisticated, multi-year and well-funded operation, dubbed “Project Lakhta,” by Russian entities to influence the election, beginning as early as May 2014.

Russians unlawfully used stolen social security numbers and birth dates of Americans to open accounts on the PayPal digital payment platform and to post on social media using those fake identities, the indictment said.

Mueller also on Friday reached an agreement with an American named Richard Pinedo, who pled guilty to aiding and abetting interstate and foreign identity fraud by creating, buying and stealing hundreds of bank account numbers that he sold to individuals to use with large digital payment companies.

According to a source familiar with the indictments, Pinedo is the person cited in the document as helping the Russian conspirators launder money, as well as purchase Facebook ads and pay for rally supplies, through PayPal Holdings Inc..

Pinedo’s attorney, Jeremy I. Lessem, said in a statement that “Mr. Pinedo had absolutely no knowledge of the identities and motivations of any of the purchasers of the information he provided.”

The Russians sought to measure the impact of their online social media operations, tracking the size of U.S. audiences reached through posts and other types of engagement, such as likes, comments and reposts, according to the indictment.

Facebook and Twitter, the social media companies whose platforms were used, both declined to comment on the indictment.

The Internet Research Agency was registered with the Russian government as a corporate entity in July 2013 and the St. Petersburg location “became one of the organization’s operational hubs,” for the project, the indictment said.

The organization employed hundreds of people, ranging from creators of fictitious person to technical experts, and by September 2016, its budget was in excess of $1.2 million, the court document said.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that he had already seen evidence Russia was targeting U.S. elections in November, when Republican control of the House of Representatives and Senate are at stake, plus a host of positions in state governments.

The indictment said the Russians it charged tried to destroy evidence of their crimes.

For example, in September 2017, one of the defendants wrote an email to a family member stating: “We had a slight crisis at work: the FBI busted our activity (not a joke). So, I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with colleagues.”

The email continued: “I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people.”

The link between Crime, Terrorism, and Migration is very real!

“Washington Post”, get rid of your obvious and misleading liberal bias and face the truth. There is no doubt, in my very humble opinion, that in the present circumstances the borders (all of them, physical and virtual) have to be strengthened. “Wall or no wall”, this country has to protect itself from this pre-orchestrated, planned, hostile “invasion”. This issue, in a long term perspective, affects the demographic composition, and, inevitably, the mind, the soul, and the essence of this country. The comprehensive immigration reform is needed to bring the order and sanity into this system. It is a bipartisan issue. The best way to deal with it is to assist the future migrants at the places where they already are, be it their own or the third countries, and to help them with the adjustment and making the rational and orderly plans for emigration or non-emigration. It will also be much more efficient, including the comparative costs of the prospective interventions vs. non-interventions options for the migrants’ assistance.

In its present state, the dysfunctional US Immigration system does breed crime and definitely linked to it, the courtesy of the various Intelligence Services, among the other factors, the terrorist activity.

Do the methodologically correct studies to reveal these connections!

It is also difficult not to see the larger and the deliberate design (I wish I would know, by whom) which can be described by this imaginary phrase: “You, Americans, deal with your own problems at your southern borders, and we will make sure that you continue having these problems; and we: the Germans, the New Abwehr, the Russians, the “Europeans” will deal with our own problems at our southern borders, which includes the Middle East, Syria, Afghanistan”, etc., etc. Very straightforward and clear, almost German in its artificial simplicity and squareness, design. The Strasbourg attack was the latest demonstration of the “Terrorism – Crime – Migration Nexus“, as it was aptly described and defined.

The recent events (US withdrawal from Syria , (even if largely symbolic but telling: “А вас тута не стояло“), and the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan confirm this line of thought further. “Theories of a crime-terror nexus are well established in the literature. Often conceptualized along a continuum, relationships between organisations range from contracting services and the appropriation of tactics, to complete mergers or even role changes. Recent irregular migrant movements have added to the nexus, providing financial opportunities to criminal enterprises and creating grievances and heated debate that has fueled the anger of ideological groups.” This pattern is reported for Europe but there should not be any significant reasons to believe that this constellation of forces and factors and their dynamics are any different in the Western hemisphere. The Statistics should help to clarify the issues, not to obscure them. And the reporters might be tempted to spin the numbers into any direction they want, just like anyone else. Let the specialists, including the statisticians, comment on these matters. The incompleteness and narrowness of the press reports like the one linked above only throws more oil into the flames and allows if not justifies the Trump’s criticism of his press coverage as the “Fake News & totally dishonest Media” and the “crazed lunatics who have given up on the TRUTH!”. (What a horrible crime! Right out of the mouth of The TRUTH Teller In Chief!)As far as “the enemy of the people”, this might be the more debatable attribution. So far. (The New Abwehr’s control of the Global Mass Media notwithstanding.)

Exploring the Nexus in Europe and Southeast Asia by Cameron Sumpter and Joseph Franco Abstract Theories of a crime-terror nexus are well established in the literature. Often conceptualised along a continuum, relationships between organisations range from contracting services and the appropriation of tactics, to complete mergers or even role changes. Recent irregular migrant movements have added to the nexus, providing financial opportunities to criminal enterprises and creating grievances and heated debate that has fuelled the anger of ideological groups. In Europe, terrorist organisations have worked with and sometimes emulated organised crime syndicates through involvement in the trafficking of drugs, people, weapons and antiquities. In Southeast Asia, conflict areas provide the backdrop for cross-border drug trafficking and kidnap-for-ransom activities, while extremist groups both commit crimes for profit and target criminals for recruitment. Keywords: Crime-Terror nexus, organised crime, terrorism, migration, Europe, Southeast Asia –“Fake News & totally dishonest Media concerning me and my presidency has never been worse,” Trump said in the first of the tweets. “Many have become crazed lunatics who have given up on the TRUTH!”